Assassin's Creed Brotherhood is a direct sequel to Assassin's Creed 2, one of last years biggest critical and commercial successes.

While it isn't 'Assassin's Creed 3' Ubisoft has made it clear that Brotherhood isn't a throwaway AC title, it's a full sequel in size and scope.

With only a few weeks left until release we've compiled a list of 10 things you should know about Assassin's Creed Brotherhood.

FREE-ER RUNNING
If you're struggling to scale a wall quickly, look for one of the many new lifts. '

Cranes' can be found almost everywhere, and sprinting into them will make Ezio or Desmond grab the rope and slice the pulley just beneath their grasp, sending the hoisted weight crashing down to the ground and them up into the air at breakneck speeds in reverse.

Useful in a pinch, great for shortcuts and, of course, it looks FRIGGIN BRILLIANT.

CHALLENGE ROOMS
At some point during the assassins' long road trip, programmer Rebecca Crane wrote new lines of code into the Anima 2.0 framework.

The best addition? That'd be the Arkham Asylum-style challenge rooms inside the Virtual Training option: Free Run challenges are races; Stealth Assassinate challenges are room-clearing tasks.

Locate challenges involve hunting for flags and tackling thieves and couriers and Combat challenges are all about notching up the kills either without taking a hit or in a certain time limit, depending on which game you pick.

REPLAY VALUE
Last year we were mystified to see Ubisoft yanking the mission replay system from Assassin's Creed II mere weeks before shipping the game.

Now the decision makes sense. Every story mission in Brotherhood comes with its own sub-task to complete in order to achieve full synchronisation.

The first secret location, for instance, must be completed in fewer than eight minutes (an extremely tough task) for the 100%, while other tasks ask you to finish without losing health or getting spotted to pass. If you fail, simply replay a past mission to get the full 100%.

MODERN REMIX
One surprising option in the Animus menu is the ability to 'Return To The Present' at any point.

Why? Well, because there's an awful lot more going on in 2012 now. Desmond's fully assassin-ed up and a large portion of the opening sequence involves (careful for spoilers, now) sneaking through the now ruined Auditore Crypt you unlocked using UPlay Points in Assassin's Creed II.

That's right: Lucy, Desmond, Shaun and Rebecca all end up setting up camp in the final assassin stronghold that was Ezio's mansion.

Monteriggioni is a great place to explore; especially now it's filled with mopeds. Those barrels you used to climb up to the rooftops during Parkour sessions? They've all cleverly been replaced by flatbed trucks.

ARMOURGEDDON
Secret Locations ranked among the best features in ACII, so their return is definite cause for celebration. The justification for their return, however, hasn't changed.

According to a scroll we collected at the end of Nero's Golden Palace (a covert location populated by a gang of ferocious 'Romulans' dressed in wolf skin - no relation to the Star Trek aliens), these are six keys locked away in a secret section. Collecting them all will unlock the Romulus armour.

CHEAT 'N' GREET
Chalk this one up to not paying attention but we swear it happened. While we were jotting down notes during a loading screen we looked up to see the following message: 'Ride the Unicorn Cheat Unlocked.'

Explanation? We don't have one, but it seems as though certain synchronisation-based tasks will unlock silly extras.

Here's hoping the unicorn's horn can be used for a spot of mounted stabby-stab action...

BLACK MARKET
Looting dead bodies and secret chests uncovers a strange selection of material. In a couple of minutes we'd bagged ourselves some medicine (very useful), a jar of leeches (less useful) and some incense (not useful beyond making your new hideout under Tiber Island smell nice, we suppose).

Not all the items have practical uses when on the move, but all can be sold at the shops for extra dough and some shops have store-specific missions asking you to collect certain items to replenish stock levels.

MULTITASKING
According to Ubisoft, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood began life after Assassin's Creed II was finished. Only it didn't.

The majority of the single-player mode did - although plenty of Brotherhood's new features were held over from ACII's ideas sheet, and multiplayer was in development at Ubisoft Annecy long before the last game shipped.

EQUIPMENT REBOOT
After a brief play with all of the goodies you unlocked in Assassin's Creed II, Brotherhood pulls the Metroid trick of stripping away your abilities and then drip-feeding them back to you one scene at a time.

We won't spoil how the reset button is pushed beyond saying Ezio's return to Rome wasn't through choice.

Storywise it's not too jarring, thankfully, and you do get to witness some sexy time before it happens.

THE TRUTH
The glyphs are back. The codes at the end of each puzzle in Assassin's Creed II turned out to be the co-ordinates of more conundrums - brain-teasers which Ezio can climb into this time around and drop out of the history books altogether.

We managed to track down a glyph just inside the entrance to the Pantheon, and it took us to another 'pick five pictures out of ten' puzzle - an old favourite from the last game.

We weren't actually permitted to see The Truth video, but a sneaky glance through the menu screen suggests it's going to be ten pieces long this time around.